Broken Telephone

Aug 24, 2008

What I’d learnt in business about message delivery is to pass the message directly to its intended recipient, with as little intermediaries as possible. In the place I work however, they stubbornly adhere to the contrary – message passing. If you’ve ever played the game called, “broken telephone”, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

To illustrate my organisation and the context, I’ll let you imagine an auditorium where a level of students are assembled. Each level contains 3 classes is divided into 30 people each, led by a class in-charge. Each class subsequently is divided into 3 groups with 10 people each, led by a group in-charge. Effectively, the group in-charge has at most 9 people under him.

Let’s say the principal needs to get everyone to do something such as taking out a piece of paper from their pockets, most normal organisations would have the principal go to the microphone and address the gathered directly. At most, the level in-charge would be informed and announcement made by him.

However, in my organisation, things work in a more ridiculous way. To send a message, the principal would instead summon his deputy and passes his message to him, and his deputy would then summon the discipline master and pass the message to him. Following which, the discipline master would summon the level in-charge and pass him the message; and subsequently, the level in-charge would then summon the class in-charge, and the class in-change would summon the group in-charge. Finally, the group in-charge would then summon the remaining 9 people under his care to tell them the (possibly already distorted) message – do an equipment check before moving off.

These elaborately detailed procedures happen all the time, regardless of the need nor inefficiencies.

You wouldn’t believe me if I were to tell you that the organisation that I am forced to work for is sadly hopeless and stifling.